still there

still there
Originally uploaded by BLTP Photo

still there....my favourite tree (pic)by me

Street Food: my Latest photo project

Why Street food?
Because it’s not just there it’s over there too and under the seat on the bus and on the wall over by the beer off and floating in that puddle and stuck on those railings
Because when it’s good it’s great but so often it’s just not
Because we want it so badly and then we kinda don’t
Because we’ve just started frying with new potatoes
Because we make the best and worst decisions when we’re drunk
Because careful it might be hot
Because we hold it close, closer than some of the people we love and then the next minute we can’t wait to get rid of it
Because forget being never less than 50 feet from a rat we’re never more than 10 yards from its dinner.
Because of salt and shake, salt and vinegar, salt and sauce, salt and pepper
Because traditional or flaky, red or brown, pineapple or egg , thin crust or deep pan, regular or large, eat in or take out, battered or plain, open or wrapped
Because I eat too much of it myself
Because someone somewhere were just bit into lemon flavoured towelette by accident
Because what is actually in those saveloys floating in their “piequarium”
Because of pie and peas, sweet and sour, juice and nuts
Because the guys that sell it look so glum
Because the people eating it look so glum
Because soon you’ll be able to have “kebab meat with Kebab meat”
Because things can be ugly and beautiful and beautiful and ugly
Because I once ate a semi frozen Gingsters
Because of the Codfather, in Cod we trust, the friars plaice, a salt and battered, Power, Corruption and pies, falafel do nicely
Because they give you too many chips at that new place
Because Earl of Sandwich didn’t “invent” anything
Because someone actually told the paperback raita joke the other day
Because jokes about deep fried mars bars are still funny
Because do you know what, I’m not sure I really wanted this after all
Because my brother once had some scraps and they had a bits of fish in ‘em
Because someone ate some sushi, a low fat bean salad and had a mango smoothie and then left the wrappers wedged down the side of a bench
Because I once saw someone licking a tub of margarine in the street
Because the 3 second rule doesn’t apply to ice cream
Because of greasy Graham, Harry Ramsden, Mrs Miggins, Colonel Sanders, Krusty Burger, Mr Whippy
Because of: scraps, scallops, parvos, stotties, wallys, cobs, baps, pie slappys, tikkas, whoppers, benders, 99’s, screwballs,cobettes, jubblies, turnovers
Because why would you not want a can of pop out of the fridge
Because: free calendars of the great wall, bags of yoghurty salad, sachets of flavourless pepper, tubs of peas, cloudy jars of pickled eggs, RNLI lifeboat collection boxes, waving golden lucky cats, plastic crabs, salt shakers with peas in them, wooden chip forks, plastic stirrers, evil eyes, old well thumbed copies of Hello, badly tuned portable tellies, those little plastic pizza box table things, blue coloured “raspberry” flavoured panda pop, tomato shaped ketchup bottles, flimsy stripy blue plastic bags
Because have you seen the muffin man, the muffin man
Because cockles and mussels a live a live O!!
Because do the fries go with that shake?
Because hotdog she drives me crazy
Because there’s a guy who works down the chip shop who swears he’s Elvis
Because the guy who works down Elvis’ chippy swears he’s Roy Orbison
Because of Mclibel, McJobs, McMansions, McNuggets, McVities
Because of that sign where the cartoon chicken is offering up pieces of chicken on plate for us to try
Because I’ve no fish left just chips, a pie and I think I’ve got a fish cake
Because of Chicken Hut, Chick ‘n’ Rib, Chick ‘n’ Fish, Chickpizz, Islamabad southern fried chicken, Hygienic Kebab, The Lucky Choice, the Kebab Centres, the Curry Centres and Chicken depots
Because yum yums aren’t
Because we used make little orangey drinks out of empty tic-tac packets
Because people make jokes about Gregg’s but their sausage sandwiches are really good
Because Tesco started selling a lasagne sandwich
Because of chip ‘oles, kebab vans, hot dog stands, ice cream vans, truckers cafes
Because there’s nothing better than the smell of your own Chinese meals but somehow that bloke 3 seats down’s chow mein smells rank
Because you can have chips &: gravy, curry sauce, beans, cheese, beans & cheese
Because kids turn up to school with a box of cold Kentucky for their lunch
Because I wanted to make it look good but still look bad
Because the phrase “grease trap” exists
Because my brother once had a kit kat that was just solid chocolate
Because I kicked myself for not taking a picture of a waterfall of chips I saw one time
Because EVERYONE knows deep fried seaweed is actually kale
Because “have you got any chips left”, “yes love” “well that’s your fault for making too many”
Because the only sweet that MacDonald’s haven’t mixed into a flurry are Victory V’s
Because “who ordered the large cod?”

Everything I know I learnt from POP.......

Went to the YSP again the other day and had another look round the Jaume Plensa exhibition. One of the best  pieces is the gong room. It's darkly lit room with circle of huge gongs hung from the ceiling. They let you into the gallery in 5's and you get to hit the gongs not in full Bombardier Billy Wells mode but in a wonderfully echoing throbbing rumble. Incised into the gongs are passages from what worked out must be "the Song of Solomon" but it was only when I got this one did I have a head slapping moment . I never heard the song of Solomon in Sunday school but I heard it on top of the pops!!

So Pop not just for getting through the journey to work, or ready to go out on the lash, or through the long dark nights of the soul but the world's best University!



Did you know Rasputin was "a cat that really was gone...."

Amy Winehouse 1983 2011

Amy Winehouse 1983 2011
Originally uploaded by BLTP Photo

After Elvis' death Colonel Tom Parker , asked by a journalist what he would do now, Parker responded, "Why, I'll just go right on managing him!".

To add to the mountain of words about Amy for what it's worth I always liked this song the best .

"Sweet reunion Jamaica and Spain,
We're like how we were again,
I'm in the tub, you on the seat,
Lick your lips as I soap my feet,
Then you notice likkle carpet burn,
My stomach drop and my guts churn,
You shrug and it's the worst,
Who truly stuck the knife in first"

Top Deck Art

Top Deck Art
Originally uploaded by BLTP Photo

Well what wonderful day, I bit a bullet at work, had easy ride through to Wakey for Artwalk.
To see Fundada's excellent Faff2011 film showing a great mix of quality short art films ranging from narrative pieces to more abstract works. Films with humour and some with a more serious edge. All wonderfully unpredictable.
Meanwhile upstairs Wakey's smallest a best Pub was open serving some lovely Osset Yorkshire golden ale a quite excellent evening even before Bob from the Milk Two Sugars gave me this wonderful Sailor to take home. Thanks to everyone at Westgate studios for a great time.

space shuttle- God speed star sailors

space shuttle- God speed star sailors
Originally uploaded by bltphoto

I remember the first shuttle launch we were allowed special dispensation to watch it in the Library at school. Now I've just seen the last one. I'll probably say this too often but I miss the future. find out more here
nostalgia4dafuture.blogspot.com/

Taken from Brooke-Bond Tea card Album the race into space. illustration by Roy Cross (?)

Tetley's RIP.

They are finally closing the Tetley brewer in Leeds's today (here's what I wrote when it first broke it more fully expressed what I want to say. An event htta seems to have happened with a whimper, hardly amention in the national press. It's shameful I imagine if a French Champagne house closed it's doors it would get more coverage in the UK than brewery closing. Oh sure they'll be brewing it elsewhere but frankly that's not the point and never was.
This lamp hangs outside a another closed pub the "The Butchers Arms" In Monk Bretton I know life is constant change just that one imagines it usually for the better, recently we seem to been turning of the lights on a whole culture.